5 Joomla Extensions That Make Joomla Super
27 February 2013

Once you have unpacked and installed a nice new shiny instance of Joomla what extensions take Joomla from being a fantastic CMS to being a super CMS?

I have tried many Joomla extensions, some are very good. The list of good extensions, I am happy to say, is longer than the list of bad ones. But, what extensions are so good, so brilliant, and so useful, they should be installed into each website you build with Joomla?

My Top 5 Must Have Joomla Extensions are:

#1 Akeeba Backup

Once you have made a website - losing it would not be fun. Having a recent backup means it is never lost for ever. All websites need to be backed up. Akeeba Backup is a great tool for this.

Akeeba backup is a fully automatic backup tool for Joomla. Akeeba backup makes a complete archive of your Joomla website. Akeeba backup can run as often as you need, both manually and automatically. Akeeba backup then can deposit the backup in to a separate storage drive - Dropbox is on the list.

Restoring a backup file is just as easy as running the Joomla installer using the Akeeba kick-start recovery script. Here is a bonus to note: you can use Akeeba backup to simply move a website from one server to the next - this option is so popular, it is built into the Akeeba Backup user interface.

I like Akeeba backup - it works. I have it making regular backups that are going to my choice of cloud storage. I have called on Akeeba backup on occasions without a problem.

You can find Akeeba backup via the Akeeba Backup website. Please note: I recommend the paid version. Some of the functions I have described may not be available to users of the free version.

#2 RSForm Pro

All websites need at least one form. The RSJoomla's RSForm Pro extension for Joomla enables making forms easy and even fun. RSForm Pro will help you setup forms and then mange those forms. RSForm Pro will help you with simple forms all the way through to complicated multi page forms. All types of forms are possible and made easy by RSJoomla's RSForm Pro extension for Joomla.

RSForm Pro has several plugins too. The plugins include: MailChimp integration; PayPal integration; and many more. If that is not enough, you can even map a form's field to another part of the database right from within the extension's user interface.

I like RSForm Pro. It's simple to use. Form submissions are easy to manage and exporting into other applications is not a problem.

#3 XMap

Once you have a website out there online, you want people to see it. You need it to be indexed by search engines. You need the pages to be found by search engines soon after you have added them. Most search engines accept an xml sitemap and will query it regularly to look for new content.

Vargas's XMap automatically produces your sitemaps. Once it is setup, you can leave it to it. Each time you add a page to your website, XMap will add the page to the sitemap for you. Once more, you can also have a copy of the sitemap in HTML format so that your human visitors can have a sitemap too.

I like Vargas's XMap because it's simple and lightweight. I like that other Joomla extension makers (particularly component extension makers), that are worth their salt, create XMap plugins so that content generated by their extension is mapped by XMap too.

Note: you will need to adjust the query if you have more than one sitemap.

#4 GoogleAJAXLib

Everybody is using a CDN nowadays and why not? CDNs make your website load faster. The scripts get cached and are sent to the user from the closest data centre to them that the CDN is using.

ReSEO's GoogleAJAXLib for Joomla simply jumps in at the right point to swap the address of the Mootools JavaScript framework to the Google Ajax Lib CDN address. The GoogleAJAXLib extension will also do any of the frameworks that the Google Ajax Lib CDN will serve, this included jQuery. So if your template or other extensions are using a framework like jQuery, ReSEO's GoogleAJAXLib will swap the address for you.

As well as giving me access to the Google Ajax Lib CDN - I like ReSEO's GoogleAJAXLib extension because it has a simple lightweight implementation. The code works with the Joomla framework the way Joomla is supposed to be hooked into. In other words its implementation is not hacky at all.

#5 Admin Tools

The Akeeba Admin Tools is the intelligent friend of Joomla. It makes Joomla run even faster, operate more securely, and looks out for Joomla to see if anything is amiss. Akeeba Admin Tools has a HTACCESS creation tool that will help you create a sweet .htaccess file suited to your needs. It has an active scanner that stops threats. The tool has a scanner that finds and identifies changes to files within your website's file system. The list of features is comprehensive.

I use Akeeba Admin Tools because they give me peace of mind. I also like that my websites are super-fast. Ok, Joomla is good at being fast and secure, I know, but we are talking super at and not just good at.

Conclusion

After installing my top 5 Joomla extensions, you will start a new website that: backs itself up automatically and is easily recoverable. A website that can collect information from its visitors and send it to almost anywhere you like. Your new Joomla website will be easily indexable by search engines. The website will be super-fast and it will be super-secure.

What to look out for?

Look out for the age of this article! I have based this on the extensions I am using with Joomla 2.5 (The current production release). I have read on the Joomla JavaScript working group forum that there is a move to put the CDN functionality into the Joomla core.